BINGO: A 'Love Letter'

By John Deming, Atlantic News Staff Writer

Atlantic News Friday, December 17, 2004

BING-OH! -- Hampton Senior play and win at Bingo game held in the Dorothy Little Room of the Lane Library. [Atlantic News Photo by John Deming]

HAMPTON -- So, you’re reading an article about Bingo and it’s largely written in the first person.

Walking into the Dorothy Little Room of the Lane Library at 1 p.m. on Friday was like walking into a grandparent’s house.

About four minutes after coming through the door I found myself seated at a card table with two plates of food — lasagna, veggie pizza, salad, Italian dressing, a roll — plus a can of Pepsi with an empty paper cup.

This would be a small sample of the friendliness and forwardness of the women who gather at the library to play Bingo each week.

Let the games begin.

“It’s like a social club,” said Florence Bellofatto. “We keep it as social as possible.”

The group of about 20, with their Bingo cards ($.50 each, two for a dollar) and ink daubers at the ready, began listening as Hampton Parks and Recreation Director Dyana Martin read the numbers.

“B-16.”

Sitting back and waiting for a winner, I poured the Pepsi from the can into the paper cup — perhaps unnecessarily — and took a bite of my roll.

“It’s always fun,” Martin said. “It’s a great group of people.”

Martin has been reading numbers at the weekly Bingo game for six years. When she began the program, it involved exercise: one hour of aerobics was followed by one hour of Bingo.

Now, the aerobics have been completely phased out, leaving a full two hours of ink-daubing and winning useful prizes.

“Bingo!” one woman shouts, raising her left hand.

She reads back her numbers, and stands up.

“Now to get one of our great prizes,” she jokes, and heads to the prize table. This week, it holds paper towel rolls, a stuffed Santa Claus, a stuffed frog, a classy dishtowel, and a “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” music box, among other items.

But it was always true as a child, I remembered, that playing Bingo was fun not for the prizes, but for the suspense of coming one square away. Though the game doesn’t seem to have changed much since then, in some ways it seems more elegant: for example, what did they mean by “love letter?”